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Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne spent the first full day of the provincial election campaign fending off attacks from the federal government instead of her provincial opponents.

Within the first 24 hours of the election call, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and two of his top ministers criticized Wynne’s government over pensions, finance and natural resources.

“If the federal government wants to be part of this (election) campaign, I need to protect Ontario,” Wynne said Saturday in Toronto.

On Friday, Harper criticized Wynne’s budget proposal to create a provincial pension plan, which would force Ontarians without an existing plan to contribute out of their paycheques.

Harper said the proposal is a tax and it won’t be popular with voters.

“If Prime Minister Harper isn’t interested in partnering with us (on pensions) he should move out of the way,” Wynne said.

Following his boss’s lead, Finance Minister Joe Oliver said Saturday that the recently tabled Liberal budget was a roadmap for economic decline.

Wynne shot back, saying that the federal government slayed its deficit “off the backs of the provinces.”

Wynne said the feds unjustly cut Ontario’s transfer payments, and reiterated her criticism that the federal government “has not stepped up on the Ring of Fire,” referring to northern Ontario’s chromite mining project.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford said the claim the feds weren’t helping with the mining project was “nonsense.”

Wynne said on Saturday that if her opponents -- Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath -- “aren’t interested in taking on the criticism (from the feds),” then she will “stand up for Ontario.”